Matthew·Love·16 of 34
The two that are one
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
Matthew 22:37–40 · King James Version
Whole love of God and love of neighbor are alike, because the neighbor is not outside the life of God.
An inner reading
“Like unto it” is the metaphysical hinge. The second commandment is not a lesser ethics bolted on after theology. It is like the first. To love God with the whole heart, soul, and mind is to withhold no chamber of the person from that love. To love the neighbor as yourself is to stop imagining a self whose good is private.
All the law hangs here because every rule is an attempt to describe this undivided love in a particular case. When the case is unclear, return to the hanger, not to a thicker book of cases. The self you love the neighbor “as” is not the ego’s preference. It is the true self, which cannot be loved while the other is despised, because they are not fed by two sources.